Background: Equipping members of a target population to deliver effective public health messaging to peers is an established approach in health promotion. The Sources of Strength program has demonstrated the promise of this approach for &ldquo;upstream&rdquo; youth suicide prevention. Text messaging is a well-established medium for promoting behavior change and is the dominant communication medium for youth. In order for peer &lsquo;opinion leader&rsquo; programs like Sources of Strength to use scalable, wide-reaching media such as text messaging to spread peer-to-peer messages, they need techniques for assisting peer opinion leaders in creating effective testimonials to engage peers and match program goals. We developed a Web interface, called Stories of Personal Resilience in Managing Emotions (StoryPRIME), which helps peer opinion leaders write effective, short-form messages that can be delivered to the target population in youth suicide prevention program like Sources of Strength.

Objective: To determine the efficacy of StoryPRIME, a Web-based interface for remotely eliciting high school peer leaders, and helping them produce high-quality, personal testimonials for use in a text messaging extension of an evidence-based, peer-led suicide prevention program.

Methods: In a double-blind randomized controlled experiment, 36 high school students wrote testimonials with or without eliciting from the StoryPRIME interface. The interface was created in the context of Sources of Strength&ndash;an evidence-based youth suicide prevention program&ndash;and 24 ninth graders rated these testimonials on relatability, usefulness/relevance, intrigue, and likability.

Results: Testimonials written with the StoryPRIME interface were rated as more relatable, useful/relevant, intriguing, and likable than testimonials written without StoryPRIME, P=.054.

Conclusions: StoryPRIME is a promising way to elicit high-quality, personal testimonials from youth for prevention programs that draw on members of a target population to spread public health messages.

figure2: The final step of StoryPRIME in which testimonial writers are shown their responses to the earlier three writing prompts on a single page.

Mentions:
If the participants chose the “Ready to Help” option, they were presented with a series of 3 writing prompts and accompanying tips. Figure 1 shows these writing prompts for the challenge of “Figuring out one’s ‘place’ or fitting in.” After completing all 3 steps, participants were shown all of their previous responses on a single page and asked to generate a concise summary (∼300 characters) as shown in Figure 2. Following completion, participants were asked to repeat the procedure for another challenge.

figure2: The final step of StoryPRIME in which testimonial writers are shown their responses to the earlier three writing prompts on a single page.

Mentions:
If the participants chose the “Ready to Help” option, they were presented with a series of 3 writing prompts and accompanying tips. Figure 1 shows these writing prompts for the challenge of “Figuring out one’s ‘place’ or fitting in.” After completing all 3 steps, participants were shown all of their previous responses on a single page and asked to generate a concise summary (∼300 characters) as shown in Figure 2. Following completion, participants were asked to repeat the procedure for another challenge.

Background: Equipping members of a target population to deliver effective public health messaging to peers is an established approach in health promotion. The Sources of Strength program has demonstrated the promise of this approach for &ldquo;upstream&rdquo; youth suicide prevention. Text messaging is a well-established medium for promoting behavior change and is the dominant communication medium for youth. In order for peer &lsquo;opinion leader&rsquo; programs like Sources of Strength to use scalable, wide-reaching media such as text messaging to spread peer-to-peer messages, they need techniques for assisting peer opinion leaders in creating effective testimonials to engage peers and match program goals. We developed a Web interface, called Stories of Personal Resilience in Managing Emotions (StoryPRIME), which helps peer opinion leaders write effective, short-form messages that can be delivered to the target population in youth suicide prevention program like Sources of Strength.

Objective: To determine the efficacy of StoryPRIME, a Web-based interface for remotely eliciting high school peer leaders, and helping them produce high-quality, personal testimonials for use in a text messaging extension of an evidence-based, peer-led suicide prevention program.

Methods: In a double-blind randomized controlled experiment, 36 high school students wrote testimonials with or without eliciting from the StoryPRIME interface. The interface was created in the context of Sources of Strength&ndash;an evidence-based youth suicide prevention program&ndash;and 24 ninth graders rated these testimonials on relatability, usefulness/relevance, intrigue, and likability.

Results: Testimonials written with the StoryPRIME interface were rated as more relatable, useful/relevant, intriguing, and likable than testimonials written without StoryPRIME, P=.054.

Conclusions: StoryPRIME is a promising way to elicit high-quality, personal testimonials from youth for prevention programs that draw on members of a target population to spread public health messages.